Slashdot videos: Now with more Slashdot!

View

Discuss

Share

We've improved Slashdot's video section; now you can view our video interviews, product close-ups and site visits with all the usual Slashdot options to comment, share, etc. No more walled garden! It's a work in progress -- we hope you'll check it out (Learn more about the recent updates).

wjcofkc writes "In the turbulent wake of the international uproar spurred by his leaked documents, Mr. Snowden published a letter over the weekend in Der Spiegel titled, "A Manifesto for the Truth". In the letter, Mr. Snowden reflects on the consequences of the information released so far, and their effect on exposing the extent and obscenity of international and domestic surveillance, while continuing to call out the NSA and GCHQ as the worst offenders. He further discusses how the debate should move forward, the intimidation of journalists, and the criminalization of the truth saying, 'Citizens have to fight suppression of information on matters of vital public importance. To tell the truth is not a crime.'"

Actually quite refreshing as manifestos go. For some reason most folk do not remember that the Communist Manifesto was much more that the ten bullet points found at the end of Chapter 2. The later Fascist Manifesto is a long-winded shameless ripoff of the ten bullet points too, but the sections were labeled and points numbered.
Somewhere along the way Mr. Snowden did not find the manifesto template that was perfected before him.

The problem in the US is that the debate is controlled by idiots... and calling them idiots is being nice.

Every debate we have in the US right now becomes a false dilemma. "Scaling back" capitalism, or doing anything that falls in the middle ground between socialism and capitalism, simply gets a person labeled a "communist" or worse. So we can't have debates.

Our last two presidential cycles should have included debates about corporate power but they didn't. This is because we have a certain group of people controlling the agenda.

There are no debates in the US, at least not in public. A debate is by definition a battle of wits between two (or more) people where one presents a theory, the other(s) present counter arguments and during debate and discussion the parties approach each other with the goal that, in the end, a consensus can be achieved, or at least a modus vivendi, a formulation that both can somehow agree with or at least accept as a common ground.

That is exactly what is NOT wanted in a "debate" in the US, especially when it comes to political discussions. Quite the opposite, political debates are painstakingly looking for the minimal differences the two parties might have to uphold the illusion that they don't in fact agree on every halfway important topic, trying to shift the focus on point- and meaningless side topics that we "may" disagree at because, frankly, nobody gives a shit about them. A standard issue political "debate" in the US would be kinda dull since only the first one to speak gets to speak, with the second one not able to add anything but "well, I agree" to the fold.

That's no two party system, that's a one party system with two slightly diverging wings.

They day the Supreme Court ruled that Corporations had the same rights as Citizens yet not be held accountable (unless you are an officer of the Corporation) tells you everything you need to know about who holds the power in this country.

Corporations were once just legal entities. Now, they have the same rights as citizens. Keep in mind, many corporations are multi-national. And, you wonder why there there is no accountability and people don't trust the government?

We, as citizens, are merely subservient to our corporate overlords. This isn't about Obama or Bush - it's about greed and power. I, for one, do not welcome my new masters.

It is beautiful to watch the above post go from +2 to +5 then right down again as the European mods are replaced by the Americans, who are just getting into work and demonstrating their fealty to mammon by logging onto Slashdot.

That (-1, Disagree) is there so you can express your opinion by buying other people's, so make sure to use it!

That logic makes about as much sense as a typical "discussion" at an Occupy rally. The surveillance state problem does not spring from capitalism, nor is socialism or any other -ism a panacea against it. Switching one -ism for another will only result in a different set of powerful people pulling the strings.

The solution is a government of integrity, small of scale but powerful where they need to be. That does not necessarily mean scaling back capitalism, but it does mean eradicating the undue influen

It seems to me unfettered capitalism is pretty much a recipe to *reduce* freedom. Eventually you have a poor class that doesn't have the freedom to do anything at all and a rich class that can do anything. That ends up being a net loss.

Eventually you have a poor class that doesn't have the freedom to do anything at all and a rich class that can do anything.

Actually that's the empirical result of the current fascist [econlib.org] policies in the US. Of course, authoritarian socialists call this 'capitalism' to try to re-frame the debate as one between fascism and socialism, but since fascism is a flavor of socialism, socialism actually has the burden of proof vs. capitalism.

Let's try doing away with corporations first, and then we can have the debate about which is working better. I suspect capitalism will win, but it will always fail if governments pick the winners and losers, because that destroys the basis of capitalism, which is information flow based on money. From an information theory perspective, socialism has several bottlenecks that will always result in a sub-optimal solution, but so does fascism.

And that's just the utilitarian perspective, for those who wholly discount freedom and are indifferent to violence. Since the socialists/fascists have taken control of the money supply, minimum wage has fallen from an inflation-adjusted $22/hr to $7 per hour (in 2013 dollars), so they have quite a lot to answer for if they want to claim superiority on class distinctions.

Practical capitalism without fascism is as easy as practical communism without fascism.In essense, capitalist believes "free market" or competition is best, communist believes a bunch of smart people, i.e. government, deciding for everybody is best and fascist believes an oligarchy he is in is best. All of them are horribly wrong, of course.

Thanks for that Powerpoint on your Great New Idea, but I'd rather not be the guy that dies because I bought from a company or chose the doctor which adhered to failed Standard A.

I don't want to wait until people die so that only the businesses with the worst lawyers go bankrupt during the resulting lawsuit. I want businesses not to be allowed to even attempt to sell dangerous stuff, so that the sale of a dangerous product is as rare as possible.

We casually accept tyranny from our employer that we would never accept from our government. And in this economy, it is not practical to abandon an employer over our rights because (a) other employers are just as bad, and (b) they ain't hiring.

that this will go to waste. No mainstream media in the US will report this, and if they do, it will be spun into a negative light. Now we got posters on here, the Guardian, and other sites that are obvious shills or just plain dumb.

I disagree. Even if all of us in the US were completely blocked from reading Snowden's words - he is something of a celebrity outside the US. The fools in Washington continue to be exposed and embarrassed over stuff as stupid as spying on Merkel. Snowden helps to solidify discontent outside the US. It all makes a difference, in the long run.

I really don't believe the TSA or any other intel agency is going to have free rein to do as it damned well wishes in the future. Whatever else may be true of presi

Yes, it is. You may have some moral justification, but it can still be a crime. In the US, telling the truth about intelligence techniques to real and potential enemies is a crime, even if you also tell the public. Snowden broke the law, and is now a criminal evading law enforcement, but he satisfied his own conscience.

Yes, it is. You may have some moral justification, but it can still be a crime. In the US, telling the truth about intelligence techniques to real and potential enemies is a crime, even if you also tell the public. Snowden broke the law, and is now a criminal evading law enforcement, but he satisfied his own conscience.

Interesting view. You do realize that in this case, 'potential enemies' refers to the entire population of the US?One might ponder the aims of such a government.

Pretty much all foreign intelligence agencies already knew about what the NSA was up to; the USA government IS upset because Snowden informed the USA general public.

What the NSA was and is doing wasn't a big secret among governments. Many of the governments now complaining about being spied on cooperated with the USA to gather and share much of this information. Yes, they might be pissed that the USA crossed a few lines here and there, but they knew the USA was spying on everyone.

The fact that the NSA was spying foreign nationals wasn't a big secret indeed, considering it's the very reason of the organisation existence. But then, it wasn't a big secret in the US either.

The details of actual operations is a completely different matter. To take the most obvious example, the Germans certainly didn't know Merkel cell phone was compromised for so long, or they would have reacted before. Same thing for the Chinese targets Snowden disclosed. The Chinese knew the US were very interested in

Well - we're back to the age-old complaint about government. Government is SUPPOSED to represent the people. Most Americans who care enough to have an opinion actually approve of Edward Snowden. The clueless and the apathetic just don't give a damn, and they'll go along with whatever government tells them.

Erh... if any country on this planet thinks that there are no spies trying to sniff through their dirty laundry for some other country, they are either deluded or simply SO far out of the loop that the effort to spy on them is not warranted by the potential intelligence.

Countries spy on each other, and they know it. Actually, I'd be very surprised if they didn't know what the NSA is doing and, instead of being outraged, tried to get in on the deal. SWIFT comes to mind, as well as a few other things that I don't want to discuss in public. The current outrage and outcry of various heads of state is mostly a smokescreen theater for the plebs.

I'm actually quite sure that the US government is exactly pissed at Snowden BECAUSE the US population knows about it now. Until now the US spooks were the "good" guys, protecting the US from teh evilz abroad. Now they're unmasked as being the local version of the Stasi.

You do realize that in this case, 'potential enemies' refers to the entire population of the US?

You may be surprised to find out that is not actually the case. A vast number of the US population demanded that we should give up some of our civil liberties in exchange for great security.

I argued against the idea but the political environment immediately after the 9/11 attack demanded that the government do everything possible to protect its citizens no matter the cost in money or civil liberties.

Thumbs up, Bill. There were so very damned few of us who were jealous of our rights. The lemmings flocked into line, to approve of everything the Stasi wanted. They couldn't be bothered to listen to the voice of reason.

The US government has a ombudsman program that allows people to "blow the whistle" on programs or individuals that abuse their power. It can be done without the need for the full blown espionage and having to take up residence in a long time adversarial country and take a job working for the foreign government.

Regrettably, ombudmen generally aren't allowed to challenge the board of directors, only report individual managers' or groups' misbehavior to the board, who then decide.

It's a fast path to management, but it only works if the people it goes to are not the ones who've created or signed off on the misbehavior.

Commons committees used to be the better alternative to ombuds in government, as they were lawmakers themselves and could change the law out from under a misbehaving executive. Alas, here in Canada they've been reduced to collections of trained seals, and in the U.S. to deadlocks.

Persue things internally like Binney or Drake to get hammered and threatened before they were forced to go public? Worked for them didn't it. How about the Plames? It's sad that the only proven endangerment of operatives in any of the past years of leaks was Cheney taking political revenge against the wife of a dissenter. I'd imagine if anyone raises a concern these days anywhere in government there would be more efficient mechanisms to discredit and dispose of them... seems to be an Obama specialty. I personally know a whistleblower who tried internal mechanisms - the well oiled process saw a psychologist label her mentally defective before she was efficiently terminated. This was not the US government but a local council.

If Snowden had followed your advice, he would have been arrested immediately and then charged with treason, espionage and/or theft of classified data.

Even his lawyer would have been gagged by secret courts under the Patriot act and nobody would have ever heard of any of this except as a little side note ("cranky former contractor in clinch with US government about handling of classified data").

Yes, it is. You may have some moral justification, but it can still be a crime. In the US, telling the truth about intelligence techniques to real and potential enemies is a crime, even if you also tell the public. Snowden broke the law, and is now a criminal evading law enforcement, but he satisfied his own conscience.

Why is it that truth about a crime is a bigger crime than the original crime itself?

Yes, it is. You may have some moral justification, but it can still be a crime. In the US, telling the truth about intelligence techniques to real and potential enemies is a crime, even if you also tell the public. Snowden broke the law, and is now a criminal evading law enforcement, but he satisfied his own conscience.

Why is it that truth about a crime is a bigger crime than the original crime itself?

I wouldn't know for sure, but I suspect there are a lot of ID10-t errors of judgement and backbone in this country. This is a non-partisan "do you understand that transparency is required for a Democracy to function?" moment. It's really galling in that we've got countless examples of how an informed public responds well and delivers more bad guys than cover surveillance, and we've got numerous examples of intelligence failures DESPITE collecting everything along with the kitchen sync. Looking at everything

No - Snowden is a "fugitive" and a "refugee" evading a Gestapo-like intelligence community. He is not, and will not, be a "criminal" unless and until a trial is held to determine the criminality of his actions. It is for this reason that Russia granted him political asylum. Political arrests are so Cold War Era.

Technically, yes, but technically so did the NSA; do we get to hold them to your same breed of logic? Snowden didn't leak pictures of the next supersekrit wizzbang gadget, or post Adobe Photoshop code on pastebin. He witnessed a system so out of control that there are no laws or legal system to contain it, or bring it back into balance. This isn't a matter of breaking an NDA agreement. Egregious breaches of the law need to be reported and the people who report them need to be given the freedom from legal consequence while those responsible need to be brought to trial.

This happened over 12 years ago but today people are acting like the outing of the recent SIGINT capabilities is groundbreaking news. Almost as shocking as the governments around the world claiming they had no idea the US had such capabilities.

Or Kucinich. Only a radical like Paul or Kucinich would have the ideology and the stones to order the FBI to dismantle the DEA's special operations division and treat every employee of the same as a probable criminal conspirator who conspired to systematically perjure themselves to win cases in federal court. You won't get this from a "mainstream guy" because moderates are moderates almost invariably because they either stand for nothing or have the intestinal fortitude of a freshly butchered lamb. One of t

Seriously, he worked for the NSA, one agency in one country. How the fuck would he know who the worst offenders of international and domestic surveillance are? There are hundreds of countries with multiple spy agencies. He had access to some of the information about one and maybe some information about a few more. And, he thinks this qualifies him to make judgments about the internal and external surveillance apparatus of EVERY OTHER COUNTRY HE HAS NO INFORMATION ABOUT, including Russia, China, and North Ko

A pledge not to publish more information that could harm the United States was the condition under which Putin said Snowden could receive safe harbor. "Edward assured me that he is not planning to publish any documents that blacken the American government," Anatoly Kucherena, Snowden's Russian lawyer said.

I guess we can all assume that Snowden is just a media whore looking for attention and to be honest, I think a good portion of the information being "leaked" is in fact made up. The last set of slides about the Google Data Center interception information was a sketch. Although we now know some of this information is valid, I'm starting to think that some of it is contrived. Certainly when dealing with espionage issues the notion of counter-espionage and disinformation campaigns [dailykos.com] come to into play. That way we all get confused as to actually what the US government is doing and how it's doing it. In the end we get confused about they said this and they said that and then we jump straight into the HealthCare.gov website fiasco and how Americans will lose medial insurance policies they've had and will have to get more expensive ones with higher deductibles starting in 2014. That and the government shutdown are great ways to spin this story to the back pages. Conspiracy Theorists in 10 years will look back and probably say that Snowden worked for the NSA all along and was actually spying on the Russians for the US.

As much as I may hold Edward Snowden in esteem - and that is a lot of esteem, actually - I tend to get all prickly and uncomfortable when the word "truth" is used in such a pontifical way as in the "manifesto". There is no such thing as absolute truth, although Mr. Snowden seems to tacitly imply and quietly assume so. There is your truth, your way of experiencing things - and there is mine. What we call "truth" is the sum vector of all these tiny vectors.

Mr. Snowden had better used a word such as "information" or "openness". I am reminded of 2 Russian words, whose meaning lies in this direction, that became rather famous: glasnost and perestrojka.

It's a pretty naive world view as well. The notion that the world would be better if all information was public. Companies and nations have to protect their interests. My problem with Snowden isn't the leaks about domestic spying, it's that he's taken on the mantle of Truth Warrior freeing all those choice bits of data that our silly little country wants to protect. Firstly, that's not his right to make the call. Secondly, the compromised foreign espionage has done a ton of damage to our country.

I get why Snowden blew the whistle on the NSA and it's domestic spying programs. That needs to be addressed pronto. But can someone explain to me how revealing our normal espionage program against our allies and against rivals is supposed to convince our allies and rivals to open up about their own spying programs? How on earth is any of this going to convince the Russian and/or the Chinese electorate to demand transparency of their own governments' monitoring systems? Especially when said governments haven't even bothered to hide that they're doing so? Snowden keeps referring to spying and information control as a global problem, but how does he hope to convince the nations who always have engaged in blatant population control to stop doing so?

"As the Americans learned so painfully in Earth's final century, free flow of information is the only safeguard against tyranny. The once-chained people whose leaders at last lose their grip on information flow will soon burst with freedom and vitality, but the free nation gradually constricting its grip on public discourse has begun its rapid slide into despotism. Beware of he [sic] who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master."

That's at best an abstract, so using such words doesn't help and reflect poor usage (which surprises me - who added the word 'manifesto' anyway?). Snowden and his supporters should adopt the words that will do his cause the maximum benefit. Though I don't think we know enough to say for sure that he chose this word.

Please look up the meaning of the word "manifesto". It's a public declaration of your own goals and intents. Nowhere there is the requirement of at least 1000 words or seven pages or whatever your threshold seems to be.

Only if it's truth that embarrasses the government and corporations that rule this country. You're free to tell all the benign truth you wish, citizen. You may also debate the merits of which of the two allowed parties is more worthy of your vote, that of Kang or that of Kodos.

But would they spy on the call to themselves to let them know they're spying? And would they know they were spying on the call about spying on the call about spying on the call about spying on the call...

To falsify my point, if Snowden really was what he wants us to think he was (an honest, aw shucks I just want to help whistleblower) then he would have used his precious Wikileaks to get the information out.

Wait... So only if you use Wikileaks as channel you get to be an honest whistleblower, in your opinion?

Obviously there are many other ways. And the Wikileaks way didn't end very well for Chelsea Manning. Finally, I agree that GWB deserves more shit than he's being served of late, but that doesn't magically absolve BHO from maintaining and in may cases drastically extending these programs.

I wasn't trying to diss WL as much as I was trying to question globaljustin's assertion that by choosing not to use WL as middle man to the press, Edward Snowden somehow proved himself to be a dishonest whistleblower (by which I took him to mean, have an agenda other than informing the public of these government programs -- I don't think many people are denying the truth of the actual contents of the leaks).

And that the reason why he might have chosen so, but that is beside the point, might be that t

No, he's betraying the corrupt portion of his government that is secretly breaking the spirit and the letter of enumerated rights in the Constitution. When this practice is exercised in other nations, like in China, the US government and her sycophants celebrates speaking truth to power.

Moral truths have a funny way of disappearing when it comes to criticizing your own nation, but that is the realm of pretend patriots who are more attached to the power of the hierarchy then they are to the claimed ideals written into our laws.

As soon as someone starts talking about "betraying the nation/country/flag" it's fair to assume they want to stop talking about whatever the claimed injustice is. That's for two reasons, usually: an irrational attachment to the symbology of their nation (instead of a rational attachment to it's stated values), or because they are beneficiaries of the current status quo and they want to keep things as they are out of puerile self interest. And, as so often is the case, the injustice is so obvious that ad hominem attacks and pro-establishment propaganda that could make a fascist blush become the standard points attempting to cover the empty rhetoric. Bonus points for including a folksy cover of patriarchal finger wagging for "young men" who have "ruined" their lives by daring to claim the government is wrong. What a lovely American ideal that is.

The sad fact is that if the American government does not value due process, freedom of speech, freedom of press, and the right to privacy, it has ceased to become worthy of patriotism. The best parts of American culture and the vast majority of people who still believe in those values are worthy of protection, not the cancerous, bought-and-paid-for, corrupted bureaucracy that is slowly depriving them of those rights. Irrational nationalism is a central pillar of fascism.

The Declaration of Independence is a manifesto. It just wasn't titled as such.

A manifesto simply explains the motivations and reasoning behind actions. It's a common trait of psychopaths and sociopaths, because they feel that their actions are completely logical, but the rest of society just needs a good explanation to wake up and rally to their cause.

Snowden doesn't need to explain his motivation to recruit followers, as the public outrage over surveillance is already quite significant. This seems to be less of a manifesto, and more of a reflection.

How long? I want to know how long until Snowden is given a medal by congress. He deserves a Gold Medal, at least as much as a Walt Disney, or Roberto Clemente, or a Danny Thomas. Browse the list yourself - some of the people who have been awarded a Gold Medal may have sacrificed more, or done more than Snowden. But Edward stands head and shoulders over a mere sports figure, or a Hollywood icon.

There are still people out there who think regular folks can run for office and not be instantly destroyed/disqualified by the Establishment?

You can't run as part of one of the two parties in the US if the party doesn't want you (e.g. Stephen Colbert), and you don't get serious media attention unless you belong to one of the two parties (e.g. Jill Stein) -- and even if you do belong to one of the two major parties, you don't really get any serious attention if the handful of people who own the media don't like you (e.g. Ron Paul).

99% of Americans can't just "run" for political office even if they had the time and money to do so. The system has evolved prevent that sort of thing.

No, "The Emperor's New Clothes" is not "a political story about a system of lies and a whistle-blower". It is a story about yes-men and making people afraid to tell the truth lead to bad decisions by leaders.

So, you lump everyone who speaks out against government as being the same? Manning was a punk ass little shit, trying to "get even" with people he didn't like. Pussy Riot maybe has some valid points, but they fail to make those points very intelligible, instead choosing to shock people with outrageous behavior. Assange is at least a reasonable comparison with Snowden. Assange stands against ALL government secrecy, ours, the UK's, Russia's, China's - all secrecy. Yes - comparing Snowden to Assange is rea